Trees, Shown to the Children

The second Willow or group of Willows you should learn about is the most difficult of all. In it there are many different varieties, and you would require to plant one of each kind in your garden, as a gentleman in England has done, and study them carefully for many years to discover the points wherein each Willow differs from the other.

Though the Goat Willow or Sallow (1) sometimes grows into a tall tree, it is more often seen as a bush—a bush with a short, rough stem, which does not rise far above the ground, and which sends up many tall, slender branches, covered with smooth, purplish brown peel or skin. Early in March, before the snowdrops have withered, you will find the Goat Willow in every hedge and coppice bursting into scaly brown buds. It is one of our earliest trees, and after a few days of warm sunshine the brown scales unclose and the branches are dotted with the softest and silkiest little pussy buds (3), shaped like tiny eggs and covered with grey down.

These buds grow alternately on the smooth stem with a small space between each bud. In a few days the baby buds have changed, and you may find two Willow bushes growing quite near each other on which the buds are very different. For those woolly buds are the flower catkins, and the Goat Willow bears two kinds of flowers, which do not grow on the same tree.

The bees have found out that the Willow is in flower; you can hear a swarm of them buzzing in the leafless branches, and you wonder where there is any honey to be found. On one tree the soft grey downy buds have grown larger, and they are now golden yellow catkins (4). The whole bud is covered with dainty yellow-headed stamens, nestling in pairs among oval scales edged with silky down, and it is at the base of these yellow-headed stamens that the bee finds the sweet drops of honey juice.

For many hundreds of years branches of the Goat Willow or Sallow have been carried in this country to church on Palm Sunday in remembrance of the branches of palm which the people strewed in front of Christ when He entered Jerusalem. Troops of boys and girls go into the country lanes and coppices to gather Willow-palms, which they sometimes pluck so roughly and carelessly that the tree remains broken and ruined for the rest of the year. These silky stamen catkins of the Goat Willow are one of the most welcome signs of the return of spring.

But there are other Willow flowers to be looked at: flowers which may not be so attractive, but which bear the seeds and make ready the new plants. These flowers are silky too, and underneath the soft down is an egg-shaped catkin (5), covered with small pear-shaped green seeds. Each seed has a thick yellow point at the top, and at the base there rises a scale which is pointed like a cat’s ear and is covered with long, silky hairs. When the stamen flowers are ripe their yellow heads burst, and the fine dust which fills them falls on the backs of the bees who are sipping the honey juice. Then they fly away to find another honey flower, and they often alight on a seed catkin, where the pollen dust is shaken off among the little yellow points which are waiting for it to help in the making of the new seeds. Each flower catkin sits upright on a tuft of small pale green leaves.

The leaves (2) of the Goat Willow are very different from those of the other Willows; they are broad and oval, with edges which are crinkled or waved all round and with a network of fine veins covering the leaf. These leaves, when they first come out, are covered with white down, but by the time they are full grown they are dark and shiny on the upper side, and are only downy beneath.

There is another bushy Willow which perhaps you might mistake for the Goat Willow or Sallow: this is the Purple Osier. It grows in boggy marshes, by the banks of slow-running streams, and it too has silky grey catkins. But you will easily recognise the Purple Osier by two things. It has long, slender stems like whips, rising straight from the tree trunk. These slender stems are covered with a fine purple skin or peel, and if you try to pick an Osier stem the peel comes away in your hand, leaving the white Willow stem still growing. These Osier stems are valuable for making baskets, and are grown in great quantities for this purpose.

The second point in which the Purple Osier differs from the Goat Willow is this: if you gather a yellow catkin and look at the yellow-headed stamens which cover it, you will see that the slender stalks of the stamens are joined together, making one stalk with two yellow heads, whereas in the Goat Willow or Sallow each yellow stamen head sways at the end of its own stalk.

There is one other Willow tree I should like to tell you about, because it is so curious. It is a tree which creeps close to the ground, and which is found growing in great quantities in the Highlands among the grass and heather. It is called the Dwarf Willow, and it too has silky catkins which grow on the tough wiry branches.

You might not notice these stamen catkins, but you could not help noticing the seed catkins. These cover the ground with tufts of white cotton wool like thistle-down, and when you lift one of these tufts you find that the pear-shaped green seed-vessels have split down the centre to allow many tiny seeds to escape, and each seed is winged with a tuft of silky down. After all the seeds have flown away on the wind, the withered seed-vessels still remain on the catkin, no longer green, but a rusty red-brown colour, which is very noticeable among the small glossy green leaves.